Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…
7 results
Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek
by Rutger Bregman · 13 Sep 2014 · 235pp · 62,862 words
itself. “We have to save capitalism from the capitalists,” Piketty concludes.37 This paradox is neatly summed up by an anecdote from the 1960s. When Henry Ford’s grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory, he jokingly asked, “Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your
The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America
by John Fabian Witt · 14 Oct 2025 · 735pp · 279,360 words
teacher had history gone a different way—became one of the most famous labor leaders in America.62 Less than a decade after his battle at Ford, Walter Reuther was elected president of the UAW, the nation’s largest union, boasting roughly three-quarters of a million members. For three years he served as president
The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War
by A. J. Baime · 2 Jun 2014 · 502pp · 125,785 words
morning of May 26, 1937, a union leader named Walter Reuther organized a gathering outside the Rouge’s main entrance, Gate 4, to hand out United Auto Workers union literature—mostly quotes pulled out of Roosevelt’s Wagner Act, which dictated by federal law for the first time that labor could organize. The Wagner Act changed
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.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=494 (accessed January 8, 2014). Introduction [>] “the biggest wartime boomtown”: Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 176. [>] “amazing and shocking”: Morgenthau, memo to FDR, May 25, 1943, “Ford Motor Company, Foreign
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the Story of the UAW (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), p. 270. [>] “the biggest wartime boomtown”: Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 176. [>] forty “dangerous aliens”: “Professor at U. of D. in Custody,” Detroit News, December 11,
Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
by J. Bradford Delong · 6 Apr 2020 · 593pp · 183,240 words
a CEO rewarding himself with a much larger share of the company’s total profits incited the ire of the union, it might not have been worthwhile for him to try. Walter Reuther was born in 1907 in Wheeling, West Virginia, to German immigrant socialist parents.14 His father took him to
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118, no. 1 (February 2003): 1–39, https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf. 14. Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor, New York: Basic Books, 1995. 15. J. Bradford DeLong and Barry Eichengreen, “The Marshall Plan: History’s Most Successful Structural Adjustment Program
Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World
by Deirdre N. McCloskey · 15 Nov 2011 · 1,205pp · 308,891 words
expense of other, sometimes poorer, workers buying autos, is hardly a formula for raising up the working class, or for that matter the middle class. Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers long ago, replied to a young manager enthusiastic about robots on the assembly line, “Tell me, those wonderful new
Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America
by Erik Baker · 13 Jan 2025 · 362pp · 132,186 words
Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work (New York: Doubleday, 1922), 92–106. 5“Tycoons: Life With Henry,” Time (October 8, 1951); see also Nelson Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 82. 6Ralph Waldo Trine and Henry Ford, “Getting the Most Out of Life
Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century
by Tim Higgins · 2 Aug 2021 · 430pp · 135,418 words
as a teenager, Ortiz understood the power of the UAW. As part of a school project, he read a book about the life of Walter Reuther, the union’s founder. He dreamed of one day becoming the president of a UAW local. The factory found salvation in 1984. Toyota sought to set